Cars of Enthusia

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Want to see more Mini Coopers? Yes you do. Click here!

By Justin Kaehler

As we've got MINI-fever around these offices, we figured we'd show you more Minis in our latest Cars of Enthusia feature. Don't like Minis? Well then, click your browser's "back" button and go find something else to read. We love this funky little car, so let's check out both versions, shall we?

For those of you that want to see movies on Enthusia, but don't want to have to read anything, click here for our Media Page. Here, you'll get to see a bunch of movies and screens of the Mini and new MINI Cooper S in the game.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's get to the history lesson.

Morris Mini Cooper 1275S MkI We gave you a brief rundown on how the original Mini came to be in our review of the new MINI Cooper. Click here for that, then come back here after you absorbed all of our wisdom. Feel smarter now? Okay, here's some more trivia about the old-school Mini.

Ah, yes... the O.G. Mini. Check out that name -- isn't it incredibly long? We think so, but it tells so much about the car. Let's break that name down for you.

"Morris" is the name of the manufacturer that actually made the Mini. Isn't it odd? The Mini is so well known, but most people (well, Americans anyway) don't have any idea who actually made the car. You should know, as we told you in this paragraph's first sentence.

You should know the "Mini Cooper" part by now, so we'll just skip over that...

The"1275" tells everyone the Cooper's engine displacement: 1,275 cubic centimeters. That's small, as is the metric horsepower number: 77. But then, this is a small car, so that's more than enough grunt to move this thing.

We're too lazy to look the rest of the name up, but we'll be brave and guess that the "S" means "Sport", and that the "MkI" means "Mark One", or "first Cooper design". We want people to write in and stuff, even if it's just someone telling us we're wrong. So if we're wrong, tell us.

This is a very fun car to drive in the game. It's very tossable, and the back end always wants to step out. This is odd, as it's a front-drive car. We're used to front-drive cars understeering. If any of you have had the pleasure of driving one of the original Minis, please tell us if the car really behaves like that, as we're having a hard time believing these physics are accurate...

MINI Cooper S We're not going to write too much about this car, as we just wrote a whole bunch of stuff in our review of the new MINI Cooper S. You can click here and find out everything you wanted to know about the car.

We'll just stick with the basics here: supercharged, 168 horsepower, and goes like stink. We can use this car to win just about any race it enters. It's nice.

That's it for this brief update on the Cars of Enthusia. We'll be back later with some rally monsters, VIP luxury rides and minivans. Minivans? Yep. If you can drive it, chances are Enthusia's got it. Stay tuned...